Online marketing, for example through mobile advertising, has become a popular method for advertisers to reach customers who may be particularly interested in the products and services offered by those advertisers. Like other advertising media, online advertising frequently involves both a publisher, who integrates advertisements into its online content, and an advertiser, who provides the advertisements to be displayed on the publisher's content. For example, publishers include streaming media services that provide free mobile applications that stream media (e.g., songs, podcast, music videos, etc.) to users of client devices. In order to remain profitable, the free streaming media services sometimes intersperse the streamed media with advertisements (such as video/audio advertisements, banners, etc.) that are paid for by advertisers.
One problem with conventional methods of online advertising is that such advertisements do not provide useful feedback to the advertisers that can be used to further develop their products and services. Nor do conventional methods of online advertising provide useful feedback to the advertisers that can be used to further develop their advertisements, or further target such advertisements to users who are likely to be interested in their products and services. For example, conventional methods of tracking such advertisements rely on metrics such as cost per action or cost per click, which at best indicate that the user somehow acknowledged the advertisement rather than indicating that the user has a positive or negative opinion of the advertised content.
Another problem with conventional methods of online advertising is that such advertisements do not provide a convenient way of engaging the user. Such advertisements can be disruptive to the user's activity (e.g., by forcing the user to watch all or at least part of a video advertisement before the user can continue their desired activity on the device). These types of disruptive advertisements can lead to annoyance and resentment on the part of the user towards the advertiser and their products and services. Alternatively, such advertisements can be more passive (e.g., a banner advertisement at the top of a webpage). Unfortunately, such passive advertisements are easy for the user to ignore and avoid interacting with. Moreover, in neither of these cases (i.e., disruptive or passive advertising) does the user feel that he or she has a personal stake in the advertisement.